New butt-friendly Citi Bikes on the way

[Image via Citi Bike]

Some 2,400 newly designed Citi Bikes are on the way.

Here's the Citi Bike blog with details:

The new bike was designed through a rigorous process based on an analysis of years of bike maintenance and performance records. The bikes feature redesigned, and in some cases higher-quality, parts which will improve each bike’s overall durability and the ease of repair. The bikes also feature a new seat to prevent water from pooling when it rains, a sturdier kick-stand and better gearing for urban riding. Citi Bikes will spend more time on the street and less time in the repair shop, improving the experience for every Citi Bike rider.

And!

The new bikes were designed in a collaborative process between world-renowned bike designer, Ben Serotta, and lead mechanics from across the bike share systems that Motivate operates. Mr. Serotta’s bikes have featured prominently in many international competitions including the Olympics.

The Daily News took a new bike out for a spin, and "found the ride smoother, and the gear system easier to switch."

Your chance to (legally) ride a Citi Bike for free tomorrow

[Citi Bike photo by Derek Berg]

Here are the details via the EVG inbox...

On Thursday May 14, Switzerland Tourism invites New Yorkers to experience the fun and freedom of bicycling in honor of Bike-to-Work Week. From 12:01 am to 11:59 pm, Citi Bike day-passes will be available for free at any Citi Bike station kiosk. This is the first time a partner has provided a free day of Citi Bike passes.

What makes Switzerland the perfect partner for Citi Bike? Easy: Switzerland offers 5,600 miles of cycling routes and 2,800 miles of biking trails as part of a program called SwitzerlandMobility. Switzerland is the place to go for anyone who wants to swap NYC's high-rise buildings for stunning mountain scenery and city bike lanes for well-marked cycling and mountain bike routes which crisscross a land full of surprises.

To ride New York City free on May 14 from 12:00 AM to 11:59 PM, riders just need to swipe a credit card and select the 24-Hour Access Pass option. No promo code is needed. A $101 security hold may be placed on the card. Standard overtime fees apply to trips that last longer than 30 minutes.

A Citi Bike winter update

[Photo on East 4th Street by Derek Berg]

An EVG reader shared this Citi Bike email update from yesterday... which discussed what the bike-renting/sharing/whatever! has been up to this winter...

Overhauling bikes: We’ve overhauled more than 2,800 bikes since November and are on track to overhaul our entire fleet before the start of peak riding season. This means in addition to fixing anything that’s broken, we’re also replacing cracked seats, fixing or replacing broken bells, checking and fixing brakes, fixing hubs so bikes shift more smoothly and giving the bikes a thorough cleaning to reduce further wear and tear caused when grit gets into the chain and other moving parts. We want your spring rides to be smooth and comfortable. Once our fleet is in good repair, we aim to keep it that way. Starting this spring we will also increase our collection and repair efforts to ensure that broken bikes are quickly identified, removed, repaired and promptly put back into service.

Fixing docking points: We’ve repaired over 1,500 docking points since November and are on track to start the spring with our docks in good working order. If you experience a broken docking point, we want to know about it. Report the station name and the number on the side of the dock to our Customer Service team by phone or email.

Planning for expansion: The first Citi Bike expansion stations are planned for installation this year in Long Island City, Greenpoint and more in Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy. These station locations have been selected through a community planning process lead by NYCDOT and involving the local Community Boards and local residents that took place starting before Citi Bike’s launch.

Noted

Spotted this morning on St. Mark's Place between First Avenue and Second Avenue… photo by Derek Berg

You won't be able to ride a Citi Bike tonight after 7 (legally, anyway)

System Alert: Citi Bike System will close at 7PM EST tonight due to extreme weather including heavy snow, high winds, and limited visibility

— Citi Bike (@CitiBikeNYC) January 26, 2015

They seem to have handled the pre-blizzard well...


[2nd Avenue earlier via Derek Berg]

Anyway you guys...

Please stay indoors and off the roads so the streets can be plowed safely! #bikenyc #staywarm

— Citi Bike (@CitiBikeNYC) January 26, 2015

Report: Citi Bike usage dropped in 2014

[Photo on 7th and A from Jan. 6 by Derek Berg]

The Post has some numbers today:

Annual membership in the bike-share program last November was 88,495, a 6.8 percent drop compared with November 2013, when membership stood at a robust 94,955, data show.

One-day memberships fell 33 percent, from 16,112 to 10,723, and weekly members fell 37 percent in that same period, from 1,339 to 843.

Abandoned Citi Bike of the day

Spotted near Stuyvesant Cove Park by Andrew Adam Newman on Ave C, who noted the bike "looked like it had been dipped in the sewer."

Some last-minute holiday decorating tips courtesy of Citi Bike

@melchp spotted this over at the Toyota Children's Learning Garden on East 11th Street near Avenue B. If you decide to decorate with a Citi Bike, then remember to dock it every 45 minutes (30 minutes for non-members!) to avoid late fees.

City Comptroller audit finds poor maintenance and shoddy oversight of the Citi Bike program

[File photo from Tompkins Square Park by Derek Berg]

We get press releases! Via the EVG inbox...

New York City Bike Share (NYCBS), the operator of the Citi Bike program, failed to both adequately inspect Citi Bike equipment and ensure stations were fully functional according to an audit of NYCBS’s compliance with its contract with the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) released today by New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer.

“New York City Bike Share’s management of Citi Bike left too many New Yorkers in the lurch,” Comptroller Stringer said. “While Citi Bike has become part of our urban landscape, auditors found that the bike sharing program’s spotty maintenance, poorly cleaned bikes and substandard docking stations inconvenienced riders and discouraged growth in the system. Moving forward, I hope that these findings will provide a road map for ways to improve safety and performance for this critical component of our transportation network.”

The Comptroller’s audit examined maintenance of Citi Bike equipment by NYCBS during the period of May 2013 through May 2014. The Citi Bike program has a fleet of approximately 6,000 bikes and 330 stations throughout the City. Bikeshare Holdings LLC recently announced an agreement to purchase Alta Bicycle Share — the parent company of NYCBS. With a promised infusion of additional capital, Bikeshare Holdings has announced plans to improve maintenance and double the size and geographic reach of the Citi Bike system by 2017.

According to NYCBS’s own maintenance data, 28 percent of bikes system-wide were inspected in November 2013, 34 percent in December 2013 and 38 percent in January 2014, despite contract requirements that 100 percent of bikes undergo a complete maintenance check at least once per month. NYCBS cited the layoff of 16 on-street bike checkers during the winter months as a reason behind the decline in maintenance checks.

By March 2014, following the re-hiring of inspectors, inspections rose to 54 percent of the fleet and to 73 percent by April. However, a sample of the maintenance records of 25 bikes from July 2013 through December 2013 found that NYCBS completed only 60 percent (84 of 141) of required monthly maintenance checks.

Anyone ride an 'Annie'-branded Citi Bike today?

We spotted one this morning on East Seventh Street and Avenue A.

Well, you can always ride one Tomorrow. Haha.

Fifty of the "Annie" bikes (to coincide with the movie remake out this December) will be in circulation until the end of the year.

You will have to do without the Citi Bike valet service until the spring

[Seventh and A via Derek Berg]

Sorry for the lack of notice … but the Citi Bike valet service on East Seventh Street and Avenue A (and East 14th Street and Avenue B???) ended last evening.

Tonight is the final night of Valet service in the East Village and will end at 9pm! See ya in the spring...

— Citi Bike (@CitibikeNYC) November 14, 2014

And what did valet service mean?

Staff will be on hand at the Alphabet City stations to make sure that every bike that arrives will get a dock. So anyone heading to the East Village on a weeknight can be rest assured that they won’t have to search for a docking point at the end of their trip.

Previously

Noted

Don't recall ever seeing a Citi Bike with a white seat … like this one on East Seventh Street at Avenue A that Derek Berg spotted…

Citi Bike is expanding, upping price of annual memberships

[Photo yesterday by Derek Berg]

Via the Citi Bike blog...

Today, we and the NYC Department of Transportation announced some big changes. Our parent company has new owners, and they have named Jay Walder, a leader with a deep passion for urban transportation, as the new CEO of Alta Bicycle Share.

There is also big news for Citi Bike. Our system will double in size by 2017. New neighborhoods will be added to our system beginning in 2015. By the end of 2017 we will have 6,000 additional bikes and over 375 new stations. The first new stations will be installed in northern Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Long Island City and further into Bedford-Stuyvesant, all neighborhoods originally planned to be part of Citi Bike’s initial deployment. If you would like to suggest a new location for Citi Bike stations, visit the Department of Transportations’s “Suggest A Station” siting portal here.

NYC Bike Share will use this winter season to overhaul the entire fleet of bikes and service docks and kiosks, ensuring that Citi Bike is ready to roll come spring. We will work closely with the team at Alta Bicycle Share to improve our operations and the technology that powers bike share.

Finally, we will be changing Citi Bike’s membership plans. Our Annual Membership rate will change to $149/year. This means a full year of unlimited Citi Bike rides will cost just a bit more than one monthly MetroCard.

At this time, you may still sign up for a new membership or renew an existing subscription at the current $95 rate. We will let you know in the coming days when the rates will increase.

H/T Stephen Popkin

Citi Bike sale apparently a done deal

[Photo by Derek Berg]

According to various published reports, REQX Ventures has purchased Citi Bike from Alta Bicycle Share.

The sale will likely see the price of annual memberships rise from $95 to about $145, though that number has yet to be confirmed.

Per Capital New York, REQX Ventures is run by people affiliated with Related Companies — developer of the Time Warner Center and Hudson Yards — and its subsidiary Equinox.

Overnight Citi Bike recap

What's going on @CitibikeNYC? There are a half dozen abandoned citibikes in the east village at 8th at and 1st ave. pic.twitter.com/ujlkpa0idC

— DS (@davidsokol) October 18, 2014

You won't have to sit on a cracked Citi Bike seat too much longer

An EVG reader shared this post from the Citi Bike blog yesterday...

We’re excited to announce that over the next few months, we will be installing new seats on the entire Citi Bike fleet.

1,500 new seats have already arrived and are being installed on bikes as they come through our shop for other repairs. Soon an entire shipping container full of seats will arrive with an additional 6,000 seats. This means we’ll have plenty of seats to cover all of our bikes plus extras to spare.

So where do all the old seats go? We’ve partnered with Bikes for the World, a nonprofit dedicated to providing affordable bikes in developing countries. Rather than let used bike parts sit in a landfill, Bikes for the World rescues and recycles them to help individuals travel to work, school, and health services.

Noted

[East 14th and 3rd Avenue this morning]

Catching up to this report in the Post yesterday:

Citi Bike is raking in millions of dollars in late fees — including from clueless tourists who don’t know the rules and annual members who constantly struggle to find a working dock, the Post has learned.

The bike-share program has collected more than $4 million in late fees since it started, with the bulk of the money coming from riders who get passes for a day or week.

Riders using short-term passes pay $4 if they go over 30 minutes, and $13 if they go over an hour.

Riders with memberships are billed $2.50 after 45 minutes and $9 after 75 minutes.

Citi Bike makes its kiosks easier to understand, probably

Citi Bike stations around the city are getting a new, user-friendly design.



This past winter, Citi Bike served as a client for first-year SVA students in MFA Interaction Design. Their challenge: "come up with ways to make Citi Bike more user-friendly for its hundreds of thousands of new and casual riders."

As the Citi Bike Tumblr explains, the proposals were so impressive that they decided to work with two of the students "to bring their work out of the classroom and into the streets."

We spotted the revamped visuals at several East Village docking stations last evening, like this one on East Second Street and Avenue C...

Citi Bike: A Reluctant Love Affair

An EVG reader, who asked to remain anonymous, submitted the following...

As an avid biker/alternative-transportation-seeker in New York City, the past few years have been a neverending whirlwind of emotions. The city has done a great job building bike lines, bike racks, hosting bike parking at events, and much more to encourage two wheeled riders.

The East Village is as busy of a neighborhood as any for bikers, with hundreds of delivery bikes roaming the streets alongside the commuters up and down First and Second and the casual neighborhood riders around Tompkins.

One issue remains, which I was reminded of in this post; bike theft seems to be as big of an issue as ever. I bought my first NYC bike about 2.5 years ago, and it was stolen within a month of owning it, despite it being locked up to an Equinox (improperly, but still, locked). I luckily got insurance money back for it, but the new bike I purchased has hardly seen the light of day during the week. When I lock up my bike outside a restaurant, I spend the entire meal EXPECTING it to get stolen. I can be 6 feet away from my bike on a patio eating, and I'll still stare at my bike to be sure it hasn't been taken.

Meanwhile, I signed up for Citi Bike before it had even launched. It was a godsend to my anxiety; I would never have to fear getting my bike stolen again, I had 3 docks within an avenue of my apartment, and I could bike anywhere south of 59th Street without worrying about taking the same bike home if I had an extra drink or two.

But Citi Bike is far, far from perfect. The app tells me there are 3 bikes, and none of them work. I show up to a dock with 5 spaces, none of them work. There are no bikes in the morning, and no docks at night. One of the best things about biking to work is the consistency in how long it will take, no matter how bad traffic is...and this is providing an opposite experience.

But it's $95/a year. Even if they jack it up to $200/year, it still feels cheap. Who am I to complain?

The bigger issue remains bike theft. If I didn't have to worry about my personal bike getting stolen, I would use it more often, I would use Citibike only when I really need to, and I would have less anxiety in general. So I have some questions for you, community:

a) How many of you both have a Citi Bike AND a personal bike? If you do, what's your split on usage between the two?
b) What could the city do to prevent bike theft? Is it even their responsibility to do something or should we be the ones spending extra money on extra/fancier locks?
c) Do you think Citi Bike is going to improve its service and reliability in the next year, or is the increasing popularity just going to make it more frustrating?

And we're off...

FYI

FYI - Valet service in the East Village has been cancelled this evening (7/15) due to a Severe Thunderstorm Watch.

— Citi Bike (@CitibikeNYC) July 15, 2014